Windows Server 2003 Partitioning

January 8, 2007 5:40 PM

How do I check the creation date of a partition in windows server 2003?

I was using the built-in Windows Partitioner to create a logical partition on our Windows Server 2003 Environment. It is important for me to find out the date that it was created.

posted by Ezrie to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Perhaps try the InstallDate property from the Win32_Volume WMI class? It's not working for me because I don't think the Storage Volume Provider works on XP, but the following should do it (in a VBS file):

strComputer = "."
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
Set colVolumes = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * from Win32_Volume")
For Each objVolume in colVolumes
msgbox objVolume.DriveLetter & ": " & objVolume.InstallDate
Next

Failing that I don't know, good question though.
posted by saraswati at 6:40 PM on January 8, 2007

The following two commands didn't work for me (and the above didn't either), but, if the above did work, then the following should work too:

from a cmd prompt:

wmic partition get DeviceID, InstallDate
wmic logicaldisk get DeviceID, InstallDate

If the InstallDate field is blank, you're probably out of luck.
posted by yeoz at 8:06 PM on January 8, 2007

The date of partition is not recorded on the drive. There is no field in the partition record for date, and the partition itself is rewritten when the partion is formatted with a file-system. Information stored about when you formatted the drive will depend on the file system you chose.

If you gave the drive a name (volume label) when you formatted it you might be able to get the date the volume label was created by using a 3rd party disk editing tool.

The next thing I can think of is to find the date of the earliest created file or directory (searching for hidden and system files), which is likely to find the first file ever created on the drive. At a command prompt at the root, "dir /od /ash" should list files created in time order.
posted by Osmanthus at 9:25 PM on January 8, 2007

The date created for "Recycler" and "System Volume Information" folders will get you a close, but not complety accurate answer. They get created shortly after the drive is formatted (not when it is partioned) and some data is written to it.
posted by internal at 9:29 PM on January 8, 2007

Thanks for the help everyone. The system volume information suggestion worked.
posted by Ezrie at 9:25 AM on January 10, 2007